Ānzhuōniichuan - Chapter 1: That Butterfly Died a Long Time Ago
Thankfully, this particular idea is not a megawork waiting to happen, just a novel's worth of ideas and arcs that came to me while I was putting the finishing touches on Double Isekai ch. 9.
Summary:
Thousands of years ago, long before anyone keeping records even knew of the place, Jusenkyo created one of the more exotic pools in its repertoire. This pool would go unnoticed and undiscovered...until an idiot hauls his son through China under the guise of a martial arts training trip.
Notes:
As of the time of posting, all Romanized Chinese is provided via Google Translate, which we all know sucks. If you know enough Chinese to spot and make corrections, please do so in the notes and I'll make the adjustments as I get the chance.
Note about pronouns: Kickin' it old-school with this one; When Ranma's (and others with gender-related curses) in male form, male pronouns will be used. Similar for female form and pronouns. There's simply going to be too much going on at various points in this to provide the necessary cues via narrative at all the places to show which body they're in without breaking the flow.
(Plus, and this is a teeny spoiler for something that comes up later in this fic, Ranma is gender-fluid and bi for this one)
(...I know, I'm writing a Ranma that's not a purely Sapphic transwoman? Me?! Who'd have thought?)
Oh, one more thing; this has a single change to the established Ranma 1/2 canon timeline. Yup, just one. Good ol' butterfly effect means that this one change means a LOT of little differences crop up over time, and the change happening thousands of years prior means that there's a LOT of these little oddities. If you're reading and say, "Wait, that didn't happen that way..." it's specifically because of the one alteration cascading through time.
...claiming full credit and ownership of the OC, though. 😎
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Preview under the cut:
"Pops, get yer furry ass BACK HERE!" shouted the now cute, short, and girly martial artist. Not cute! Rough and tough and manly, damnit! The ground they were running across was shifting, which made sense. The entire valley was littered with spring pools, it wasn't surprising that the soil would be loose. That said, she and her currently panda father were far too skilled as martial artists to let some loose topsoil hinder them.
Surprise human male to the face...not so much.
Ranma's one real thought as she took a human person's mass to her torso and head was, Hey, he looks familiar! just before he impacted with her. She felt them both slam into the weak soil and the entire surface started to shift. Thinking quickly, she grabbed first a handful of grasses, then a handful of the shirt the other boy was wearing and held on as what turned out to be the embankment of a bluff, not quite a cliff but close to it, that overlooked a section of the Pools of Sorrow. She felt her shoulders nearly yank out of their sockets as gravity hauled the boy down into the valley. Remembering the abject terror she experienced not minutes before as she surfaced from the source of her own life-altering change, she was not going to let that happen to anyone else if she could help it. "Grab on!" she shouted, "Hold on to something!"
The boy (Why does he look so familiar?!) shook his head to clear it and looked around before looking up at her, "It's fine, I'm a martial artist. Just drop me, I'll land in that water down there."
"Nononono!!! You do NOT want to land in that water!" she felt more than heard the grass she was gripping in her other hand starting to tear. She may have a fairly sizeable handful and her grip was trained by no fewer than four obscure martial arts her old man had dragged her to over the years that focused on weirdly specific stuff like that, but grass was grass was grass and this wasn't going to hold up under their combined weights. "Trust me," she practically shouted, "Falling in this water is very bad!" She glanced around herself, trying to find anything that would give her purchase to keep them from taking another dunk. Unfortunately, when the ground beneath them gave way, not only did it break off some of the bluff and take them down with it, the remaining earth, an almost wet clay from what she could tell, was angled away from her. She was basically being held aloft by tearing grasses and her wrist as she held the training ground's next apparent victim over what looked like a fairly out-of-the-way pool. Right over it. As in, even if she managed to swing him somehow, she wouldn't be able to get him far enough out to avoid landing in the water.
"I can swim, it's okay, really! Don't hurt yourself on my account, miss!"
"I'm not a 'miss,' you idiot!" At his baffled expression, she started getting a little frantic and it was coming out in her voice, cracking an octave higher than she liked, "I woke up with a dick and no boobs this morning!"
He seemed to get it, at least enough to react the way she intended him to, eyes going wide. Unfortunately, just as he was raising his hands to grab onto her wrist, his shirt tore. In Ranma's defense, it looked like it was an older shirt that had seen one too many days on the road.
Ranma felt like time was going in slow motion as the boy fell to the water. This particular pool didn't have a shoot of bamboo sticking out of it, so that potential fall hazard was, thankfully, not there. On the other hand, if he was a martial artist like he said he coulda grabbed the pole...not like it matters now... As the splash pattered to the ground and surface of the pool, she realized that this particular pool wasn't as deep as the one she had fallen into...not that it made any difference in the end result. Huh...I guess there's two girl springs...? she thought absently. The freshly minted girl made her way slowly to her feet, water coming up to about her thighs. The torn shirt was substantially more filled out in the chest than it had been previously, and the girl's previously black hair was now a shockingly pretty green color that somehow looked right on her and made the black and yellow bandana on her head stand out in a very cute and attractive way. Well, at least the springs make some real lookers, she thought. "Oh, jeeze!" she hollered down, "I'm so sorry!"
The girl looked up and Ranma could swear her eyes kinda flashed at her, but that was probably a trick of the light.
Just then, the guide managed to run down the path between the springs. "Mister customer...! Oh, another customer! Not need run so much! Was going to..." the man clearly wasn't nearly up to Ranma's fitness level as he stopped and huddled down, hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath.
As though everything else that happened weren't enough, she heard the sound of the grass tearing further and had just enough time to say, "Oh fu~!!!" before she felt gravity get its revenge and yank her down. She managed, by sheer dint of the training her father had put her through, to reflexively grab onto the one thing between her and the pool, which was the other teen's backpack. She found herself practically wrapping around it like a particularly affectionate vine, not wanting to test what happens when you fall into two pools on the same day.
Which was, apparently, a valid concern. "Aiyah!" gasped the guide, "Mister customer be very careful! If fall into two pools the..."
...which was exactly when the straps on the backpack, sized for the brick of muscle and bone the other girl had been not five minutes before and not the willowy (if well endowed) form the other teen had now, chose that moment to fall off her shoulders and drop Ranma in the fairly shallow water.
As she surfaced (not hard to do, she merely had to sit up...though that task was made a little harder by the surprisingly heavy pack that planted her firmly on the spring's floor), she heard the guide say with a very disheartened voice, "...curses mix..."
"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!" came a voice that sounded light and willowy as a hand reached down and hefted the pack from Ranma's body. This freed up her hands so she could rub the water out of her eyes and she looked up and saw the new face of the other teen...and found herself oddly transfixed, even if just for a moment. It wasn't quite like when she saw a pretty girl and her heart skipped a beat, or at least it was different enough from that feeling that she could identify it as different, but it wasn't anything she could remember feeling with anything or anyone else before.
"'S'okay, it aint like I didn't already take a dunk. Guess I'm just now double-girl or something." She took the other new girl's offered hand and together they waded their way to the dry bank.
"Very strange, not sure what spring customers fall in..." the guide's words trailed off as he scratched his head.
Ranma looked back to the pool and then at the guide again, "Aint it just another girl spring or somethin'?"
The guide shook his head, "Customer no understand; only one of any type of spring in all valley." He pointed at the spring right next to the one they had fallen into, "That Spring of Drowned Pig, tragic story of pig who fall into spring and drown over 400 year ago." Both Ranma and the other girl looked at the still water with alarm and very deliberately moved to stand over next to the guide, "No be another Spring of Drowned Pig until this one dry up or get buried and another pig drown in different, fresh spring. Mister Customer," he indicated Ranma, "Already fall in Spring of Drowned Girl, but I not see this spring before," he pointed at the still rippling waters, "Look like bluff fall, uncover spring, I think? Not happen often, but surprised spring not buried when bluff fell."
"Well, whatever," she sighed, "I...need pants. Can you get me back to my pack? And, I dunno, maybe help us find a cure or somethin'? We're both supposed t'be guys."
"Ah, yes! Mister Customer and other customer run away before I could explain; curse only part time. You always be cursed, but get normal body back with hot water." The two girls blinked owlishly at him, so he clarified, "Cold water now turn you into cursed form," he waved up and down at their new bodies, "Hot water turn back into mans. I have kettle at home, will change you back."
They both heaved a sigh of relief, "Well," said the new girl, "It aint a cure, but it's not as bad as it could be."
"Oh, gods!" exclaimed Ranma, "I thought I was stuck like this forever! Lead the way, sir, I need pants!"
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Elenco principal: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blanck
Banda Sonora: Michel Legrand
Em "Cléo de 5 à 7” o espectador observa cada passo, cada expressão de Cléo durante a sua deambulação por Paris. Cada plano é meticuloso, exacto e o posicionamento de personagens e objectos por vezes comunica mais do que o próprio diálogo e enredo, ou não seria Agnès Varda treinada em fotografia. As imagens poderiam ser as de um quotidiano despreocupado, quase lânguido, mas sobre cada instante da tarde de Cléo, até ao momento em que encontra Antoine no parque, existe uma inegável sombra, uma ansiedade.
É a náusea da consciência da mortalidade face à banalidade e frivolidade da vida urbana de uma jovem cantora parisiense. E face à morte, Cléo não é uma heroína. Cléo está aterrorizada com a ideia da sua própria morte, de uma forma que chega a ser narcisista, não apresentando nem uma tentativa de coragem, mas antes oprimindo todos os que a rodeiam com o seu pavor. Não tenta, no entanto, resistir à futilidade da sua própria vida, como quando se deleita na adulação de vários homens no café quando está a chorar, quando se encontra com o seu amante para aquilo que parece uma cerimónia vazia de cortejo, e, mais notavelmente, na cena em que visita uma loja de chapéus com Angèle.
Nesta cena, assistimos à indulgência materialista de Cléo, e à sua descarada vaidade. À partida esta seria uma atitude incompreensível de alguém que espera receber uma notícia terrível e fatal. No entanto, se tivermos em conta a frase pronunciada em frente a um espelho por Cléo numa cena anterior, torna-se óbvia a forma como esta auto-obsessão é justificada: "Tant que je suis belle, je suis vivante et dix fois plus que les autres.”. Cléo crê que a beleza é a sua salvação da morte, que de alguma forma esta a vai proteger. É uma mentalidade supersticiosa, e a superstição é outro tema muito presente no filme. Desde a sequência inicial da leitura de um baralho de tarot, passando pelas várias superstições apontadas por Angéle, e que são respeitadas (ou não) por medo mais do que por vontade, e terminando com a própria vivência ritualizada e agendada da protagonista (apenas quebrada na sua deambulação no parque), é evidente uma lógica obsessivo-compulsiva de levar a cabo certas acções como forma de evitar que algo de mal aconteça.
No entanto, Cléo tem certas atitudes desafiantes, como a compra do chapéu negro fora de época, um chapéu de simbologia ominosa, e que revela o seu estado subconsciente: fúnebre e negligente da aprovação exterior, visto que esta aprovação se torna irrelevante face ao abismo da morte. Esta interacção da vida interior de Cléo com o mundo exterior que continua indiferente à sua crise é explícita nos planos em que imagens da rua projectadas nas janelas se sobrepõem à sua figura, caminhando sozinha pela loja.
Esta cena está também repleta de arquétipos femininos, contrastando-se a Cléo jovem, alta, loira, de feições suaves e indumentária alegre e elegante, todo o estereótipo de beleza convencional feminina, com tanto Angèle como a dona da loja, ambas baixas, escuras tanto na compleição como no traje e sobriamente modestas. Mais uma vez toca-se na questão da beleza equivalente à vida, que aqui é subvertida, pois apesar da vaidade triunfante de Cléo, esta é a de saúde mais duvidável, facto de que está dolorosamente consciente.
Cléo é assim uma protagonista improvável, e que só poderia ter sido imaginada por uma realizadora. Agnès Varda apresenta-nos um retrato de uma mulher em extensão, em tempo real, não uma versão sintetizada ou idealizada. Cléo não é misteriosa, é apenas superficial, infantil e revelada em toda a sua cobardia. Não é imaginada como objecto de desejo mas como sujeito que ocupa toda uma narrativa com a imensidão da sua existência e a tensão de esta poder acabar. Não é uma mulher que admiremos, mas é uma mulher imperfeita, complexa, multi-dimensional e egoísta como poucas mulheres retratadas no cinema alguma vez são.
Nas últimas cenas do filme realiza a sua redenção, ao revelar o seu lado mais humano, agora sob o nome de Florence. Desde o seu encontro com a sua amiga Dorothée, vai-se afastando cada vez mais do mundo doentio e artificial da vida urbana, e paralelamente ganha uma percepção mais madura e participativa sobre o mundo. O seu passeio pelo parque é a concretização máxima desta quebra com a vida calendarizada e oprimida por paredes, culminando na conversa delicada mas impulsiva com o jovem soldado Antoine. Na viagem de eléctrico, a cidade é agora repleta de árvores, de frescura, de movimento. A natureza rodeia-os, e Florence aparece na sua forma mais natural e menos contaminada por comportamentos juvenis escapistas. A sugestão é de que a sua frivolidade é uma reacção adaptativa à frieza do mundo que habita, e que quando confrontada com genuíno contacto humano e com a liberdade da vida natural, também ela se torna mais corajosa, mais consciente, mais bem equipada para lidar com a sua própria morte.
